She Gets It!

Ever since Claire turned the beautiful age of 1, things have really "clicked" with her. It's amazing to watch her play, sit and look at books all by herself and our new favorite thing, "communicate" with us. For example, she loves to take baths. So, in the evening, she'll be playing in her room and I'll pop my head in and say, "Claire, it's time for a bubble bath." She looks at me and then as fast as her little legs will take her, she crawls out of her room, down the hall and into the bathroom. She also enjoys opening drawers in her dresser and pulling out a new outfit to wear that day. Here are a couple new pics to show how our little lady is growing up...and out...take a look at that tummy in the second picture!

First Birthday

Claire blowing kisses to thank everyone for coming!

Believe it or not, our baby Claire is 1 year old! It really feels like just yesterday we were sending out her birth announcements, and now we are sending out her first birthday party invitations and 1 year old pictures...sniff sniff. But it has been a wonderful year! One we will never forget and pray for many many more! Since Claire's grandparents live in two different states of course we had to have two different parties. Claire bear didn't complain. With more parties comes more cake!! Her first party took place in OH with Grammie and Pops. Pops grilled out and then Princess, I mean Queen Claire dove into her sprinkle cake followed by presents. Then her second celebration took place in KY. Friends and family from all over gathered for pizza, cupcakes, Claire's first year of life movie and more presents,that all the kids got to help open. Wouldn't that be funny if we still did that as "adults". Anyways, thank you everyone who helped celebrate our precious Claire's first year of life. One last update...Claire had her one year check up on Monday and did not quite meet the requirements for a big girl car seat. So our sweet 17 pounder has to continue facing backwards in the car, but we're hoping by the time she's in kindergarten, she'll be able to face foward. hehe just kidding. ok, enough of the chit chat...here are a few pics. Enjoy!

Claire's First Christmas

Tony, Claire and I celebrated our first Christmas as a family on Friday, December 21st before heading north to visit family. It was a sweet time we will never forget. We began with brewing the gingerbread coffee and getting out daddy's bible to read the Christmas story. Tony read as Claire listened for about 5 seconds...what can you expect from an 11 month old when there are no pictures to look at :) Anyways, we moved along to presents. Claire received a ball and microphone. She loves to push the ball around and chase it - in her "inch worm" style of crawling. She can crawl on all fours, but is much faster when she does the worm/army crawl. And the microphone magnifies her voice, so she really likes to "sing" into that and hear her voice echoed back to her. She smiles each time she makes a noise. I'm proud to say that her first Christms cost us a whopping $3! Praise the Lord for easy and cheap entertainment :) We then packed for our travels to see family. We got to enjoy time with both our families from Saturday thru Wednesday. It was great. Unfortunately I left our camera up there, so i don't have too many pics to share. But here's a start.

All three of us came down with nasty colds the day after Christmas, which we're still going thru lots of tissues and cough drops, so we'll be celebrating New Year's Eve just the three of us at home this year. We'll see if Claire can make it to midnight :)

Black Friday - Here We Come!

Claire enjoyed her first "Black Friday". This is the two of us fighting our way through Target. It was great! We had a nice day shopping around and getting some really great deals. We celebrated our savings by driving through McDonalds for a DP for Mommy and a small fry for Claire bear. When we got home, we put on some Christmas music and decorated the tree. This will be Claire's first Christmas and we can't wait to share the JOY of the LORD with her!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today was Claire's first Thanksgiving. We enjoyed a yummy feast at our friends' Rocky and Suzanne's home. Martha Stewart...I mean Suzanne set a beautiful table for all her guests to enjoy. She even took care of the turkey, along with a few other favorites. We each brought a side item or two to share. Everything was soo yummy! We then moved the party into the livingroom where we watched Elf and looked through the Black Friday ads. It was great! Here are a few pictures to share our Thanksgiving in Louisville. Tomorrow we'll put up the tree and see how long it takes Claire to knock it over! :)

Happy Halloween!

Claire celebrated her first Hallween yesterday, and what a fun day that was. First we started the morning off with pumpkin muffins for breakfast. I dressed her in her pumpkin "costume" because it does double nicely as warm outside coverup. We then went for a long walk. After a nap and play time with her real pumpkins, we dressed up again and went trick or treating. Our first stop, Rocky and Suzanne's. Then we went up Hillcrest that was more than packed with trick or treaters. I think the most popular costume this year was spiderman. And of course they were mostly little skinny 5 year olds with big fake muscles. Hilarious! The houses were decorated in everything from spiders, ghosts, charlie brown characters, cemetaries, smoke and music. WAVE 3 news was even there. One family said they gave out 3,000 pieces of candy last year! It was quite an experience. Here are a few pictures to share our fun day.

9 months!

Our baby Claire is nine months old today. Time has really flown! It feels like we just posted her six month pictures yesterday. What are her accomplishments this month...? she can say dada, mama and baby. However, when she says baby, she's wispers it - too cute. She also does the army crawl and when she's sees something she really wants she can scoot lightning fast. She has started to get on her knees, but just rocks back and forth. She has also graduated to sitting in a shopping cart like a big girl (without her car seat). She definitely enjoys the view better :) I just love her sweet personality and how she smiles from ear to ear in the morning when i walk in her bedroom. What a treat and gift from God! I almost forgot to mention one of her most exciting new "things"...teeth! she has two bottom teeth. She loves to eat, so these babies will come in handy. That's it for now, but we'll keep you posted on any Halloween updates.